Other Cost Tools

Full Cost of Manpower (FCoM) is a cost analysis tool designed to provide a consistent method for personnel and compensation analysts across the DoD to calculate the full costs of manpower, as defined by Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Cost Assessment Program Evaluation (CAPE), Personnel and Readiness (P&R), and the Comptroller (OSD(C)).

CaSES provides an open source Excel-based solution that adds efficiencies while significantly improving cost estimating and model development capabilities. It includes more than 20 cost estimating productivity improvement tools; generic cost model templates; and cost and schedule time phasing functions. CaSES is the perfect complement to the data available in CADE. For more information, visit https://www.ncca.navy.mil/tools/cases/cases.cfm .

Joint Cost Schedule Risk and Uncertainty Handbook

The Government cost analysis community recognizes the need to capture the inherent uncertainty of acquisition programs into realistic cost estimates to support milestone decision process. Programmatic, cost, schedule, and technical uncertainties are present from the earliest concept exploration phase, through system development, acquisition, deployment, to operational and sustainment. Many estimating processes have focused on producing a single, discrete dollar value that in turn becomes the budget. Realistically, estimating processes develop a range of likely values, with objective and quantifiable analysis of uncertainty intrinsically embedded. The goal of this handbook is to introduce industry best practices for incorporating uncertainty into our estimates in order to provide decision makers with the information necessary to make sound, defendable investment decision.

Cost estimates are required throughout the life-cycle of Government acquisition programs, starting from the early stages when requirements may be ill-defined and when potential solutions to provide the capabilities have yet to be developed. Ideally, analysts rely on objective data analysis to develop their estimates. Often however, it is necessary to resort to subject means. In both cases, there is uncertainty in the data, the process and the ultimate estimate. This handbook provides guidance on how to capture and quantify this uncertainty in a manner that supports the decision maker's needs.

This handbook emphasizes the need to shift away from estimates based solely on the “best guess” of system and programmatic parameters and encourages the cost analyst to build models that address technical, programmatic, cost and schedule uncertainties, and risks as inter - dependent - not-separate - processes. This handbook is “tool-independent” and uses a single model to support examples that show the reader how to implement the guidance in a realistic setting. Illustrations are drawn from three industry-common cost risk and uncertainty analysis tool: @RISK, Crystal Ball, and ACEIT RI$K. Regardless of the tool used, adherence to the guidelines yields equivalent results.

The effective incorporation of risk uncertainty in cost and schedule estimates is a challenging task. This handbook is promulgated to help establish a systematic, structured, repeatable and defendable process for delivering comprehensive estimates to Government leadership to get the best possible capability with increasingly limited available resources.